Although I had heard of the Uyuni Salt Flats and had even seen some photos of it, I was not prepared for its extraordinary vastness and unique beauty.
Nowhere I have been can be compared.
The expanse challenges all I’ve known when land and water meet sky. 
We have probably taken pictures of ourselves since photography’s inception–although those unwieldy instruments made it notably more difficult.
And I can readily recall numerous photos posing in front of this structure or landscape or at that event. But I do not recall the primary subject of our own photographs so often being ourselves.
The selfie is ubiquitous. It has become a validation of self: a necessary emblem that we exist.
There is satisfaction in sleeping again in my own bed, but a realization too that the rush of the new is less easily attainable. It is not present in all I see and do.
Yet I reacquaint with what is home.
After weeks of travel in distant lands, I have returned to an environment where the tongue I hear is mostly my own. I navigate comfortably through the mass transit and do not question the value of the bill I hold in my hand. The codes of conduct are not unfamiliar and my step is assured.
I wander into a neighborhood and seek a familiar landmark of which there are none. The nighttime casts shadows obscuring any signs to guide my way. The tearing up of asphalt with heavy machinery, glaring lights, cordoned streets, disorient my passage. The streets are barely navigable. I walk on avoiding the impromptu hazards. I walk on. The unfamiliar has yielded to the familiar once again.